Let’s start with a simple question – What took the Constituent Assembly and the Drafting Committee nearly three years to draft the Indian Constitution? 

The Answer – They were studying constitutions from around the world and perhaps had to get some of them translated! 

Jokes apart and without being disrespectful towards the towering politicians, legal experts and mass leaders behind the constitution they left us with a vision that guides us each day in our lives. The Indian Constitution is often termed as a ‘bag of borrowings’ as we have borrowed the best ideas of democracy, liberty and freedom from different countries in the world. It is the longest written constitution in the world as so many ideas and thoughts were incorporated into it. So where did we borrow from and what the foreign ideas that have made into our constitution? Let’s take a look at some of the major borrowings in the Constitution of India. 

Fundamental Rights 

The relationship between India and the United States is often seen as the friendship between the oldest and the largest democracies in the world. And the seeds of this friendship were perhaps sown in our Constitution as the concept of Fundamental Rights came from the United States. The Fundamental Rights are mentioned in Part III of the constitution and guarantee civil liberties to the citizen. It is mandated that all State and Federal laws must be in accordance with the Fundamental Rights guaranteed to the citizens. 



Concurrent List

The Concurrent List defines the power of the States and the Union in terms of legislative and administrative powers. The idea behind Concurrent List was borrowed from the Australian constitution. Considering the diversity of the country and often overlapping interests of different regions and groups this is one of the strengthening pillars of the constitution that preserves the Federal structure of the Union and its unity. 

Directive Principles of States Policy

The Directive Principles of the State Policy was influenced by the Irish Constitution. It is less known that the Irish themselves took this idea out of the Spanish Constitution. In simple words, these act as a guide for the Union and State government while framing laws for the people. The aim behind this was to establish a welfare state and create a situation where ordinary citizens can live a life of dignity and equality.

Constitutional Amendment

The framers of the Constitution saw Constitutional Amendments as a natural process in the life of a democracy and didn’t want to be too rigid about these amendments nor be too lenient towards the process. The procedure of future amendments was clearly defined in Part XX of the Constitution. They neither wanted to make the Parliament supreme like in the UK, nor an inflexible system existing in other democracies. They opted to walk somewhere in between and drew inspiration from the South African Constitution in this regard.

Emergency Provisions

The Constitution of the German Reich or the Weimar Republic (not to be confused with Hitler’s Third Reich) inspired Emergency Provisions in the Indian Constitution. The Emergency Provisions are contained in Part XVIII of the Constitution and clearly state the powers of the President to impose a State of Emergency in any of the State or the whole Union when the integrity of the nation is threated by war, external aggression, armed rebellion or breakdown of constitutional machinery.